Sunday, January 22, 2012

Indie Book Reviews

Last week I spoke about my fresh perspective on Raging against the dying of the light after reading Crossed by Ally Condie.One of the things I said I was going to do to help stave off the dying of the light was encourage the good in those around me, and for this post, more specifically, supporting Indie authors.

One of the ways I intend to support them is the obvious; buying their books.But I also want to take that a step further, because as an Indie author I can tell you having your book purchased is awesome, but there is nothing that compares to hearing from a reader who loved your book and thought enough of it to tell the rest of the reading world their opinion in a review.

A review is a two-fold gift, it provides us as authors that warm fuzzy, day making feeling, but, and this is incredibly important and helpful for an author, it gives other readers who might be considering reading/purchasing the book a vote of confidence, or in the case of a bad review, a cautionary warning.

I look at reviews if I’m on the fence and not sure I want to pay the cost for the book, but more importantly do I want to invest the very little extra time I have to read in an untested author that I know nothing about other than the blurb on the description page.So, for Indie’s, it very literally helps sell books.Reviews can make or break them.

So, in my long winded way, and hopefully informative way, what I’m trying to say is that I plan to invest a minimum each month of $6 to buying and reviewing Indie authors books.($6 because most self pub’d books are priced at $2.99 give or take.That affords me two books at the typical Indie price per month.)

I already have two titles which I’ve purchased or picked up for free during a promotion.

I was going to start with these two titles, because I have them and I have a secret love for werewolf/shifter stories, but I’m a two-thirds the way through my own shifter novel.To avoid influencing my own works in any way I don’t read books that are in the same theme as the one I’m writing at the time.So these two will have to wait.

Here are the two I’ve chosen for this month.

Winter by C.B. Cole, was found by searching through Amazon ( A tedious process that leaves much to be desired. ) and the other, Belle Notte by Jesse Kimmel-Freeman, was a recommendation from another writer friend.She hasn’t read it but said the author is a real sweetheart, and it fit my parameters.I read the first page or so and the writing style works for me, even though I’m not big into vampire novels.But the point of this is to give authors I wouldn’t normally try, a chance.